e I did not yet think the Indispensable
Necessity had come.

"When in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive
appeals to the Border-States to favor compensated Emancipation, I
believed the Indispensable Necessity for Military Emancipation and
arming the Blacks would come, unless averted by that measure.

"They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven
to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the
Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the Colored element. I
chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss,
but of this I was not entirely confident.

"More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our Foreign
Relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white
Military force, no loss by it anyhow, or anywhere. On the contrary, it
shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen,
and laborers.

"These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no
cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the
measure.

"And now let any Union man who complains of this measure, test himself
by writing down in one line, that he is for subduing the Rebellion by
force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking one hundred and
thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they
would be best for the measure he condemns. If he cannot face his case
so stated, it is only because he cannot face the truth.

"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this
tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have
controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Now at the end of three years' struggle, the Nation's condition is not
what either Party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can claim
it.

"Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a
great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the
South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial
history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the Justice
and goodness of God.
"Yours truly,
"A. LINCOLN."

The 8th of April (1864) turned out to be the decisive field-day in the
Senate. Sumner endeavored to close the debate on that day in a speech
remarkable no less for its power and eloquence of statement, its
st